


Last Bow

by TJade



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Body Horror, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27256963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TJade/pseuds/TJade
Summary: He isn’t afraid, though he feels himself fading.“There will always be fear,” he’d said.  It was the truth.  There would always be fear, but he would not always be its vessel.
Kudos: 17





	Last Bow

The Boogeyman isn’t fearless. It’s something he’d be loath to admit out loud- he has a reputation to uphold, after all- but he can admit to himself easily enough. He knows fear. It’s the one thing he always knows, and because of that he knows when it’s not there.

He isn’t afraid, though he feels himself fading.

“There will always be fear,” he’d said. It was the truth. There would always be fear, but he would not always be its vessel.

The Guardians will surely call him mad, once it’s done. They will think him insane, desperate. They will say he had given up, and he has. However, he does not think they will understand. They will assume this was an act of despair, a dramatic last bow, when it’s naught but simple resignation. Optimistically it could even be seen as acceptance: acceptance of the Guardians, acceptance of his defeat, acceptance of his place in the world

(or lack thereof).

He’s felt this before. He is of the dark, from the dark, and ever does the dark seek to reclaim what it had borne. In the years following the appearance of the Guardians, he had struggled- not to reclaim his hold on the world, but to keep hold of his sense of self. The dark sought to reclaim him wholly. It would not care to preserve his identity in doing so. It will not.

He’d resisted, back when he’d thought there might be a chance, however slim, of regaining his old power. He’d shut his ears to the siren call of eternal night and busied himself with building an army, planning his attack, fighting a war that he would never win, could never win.

Now he embraces it. He lets it consume him, lets the hollowness inside him spread and spill and surround him, lets it unmake him.

There will always be fear, but he will not always be around to spread it.

His form begins to break. He is vaguely aware of it, though far past the point of feeling pain. He cannot even bring himself to be perturbed when his skin splits open, flaking away to reveal something like tar in appearance. It’s dark in color, of course.

“Pitch black,” he thinks, and nearly laughs.

He still has fingers. More fingers than before, and likely more fingers than anything should really be allowed to have, but fingers nonetheless. They’re long and thin, sharp and spindly, to the point where his hands don’t quite resemble hands so much as they do clumps of spider’s legs sprouting out of the ends of his arms.

He really does laugh this time, and is almost startled at his voice, if such a sound could still constitute as one. It’s a dry, grating rasp, like the scratch of fingernails on a wooden door.

There’s water nearby. He assumes he must have made his way outside at some point, though he can’t recall how this came about. He supposes it doesn’t matter, or at least won’t in a few moments.

He glimpses something in the water. It’s an inky splotch roughly in the shape of a man, with no face to speak of other than two unholy yellow lights set where eyes ought to be. Though reflections in water are rarely as crisp as those from a solid surface, he doubts the liquid is responsible for the blurring around his edges.

Pitch Black, the Boogeyman, the Nightmare King. He will be gone soon, with nothing but his legacy to leave behind. But oh, what a legacy it is.

What a legacy it will be.

He wonders, with whatever of his mind remains, how long it will take the Guardians to recognize this creature as what’s left of their old enemy. Will they try to destroy it? Will they try to bring him back, deeming him the lesser of two evils? The possibilities are delicious. He might regret not being around to see which comes to pass, if he was still capable of regret.

The Boogeyman isn’t fearless, but he is no longer the Boogeyman. He is void of identity, primordial, raw.

He is fear, and there will always be fear.


End file.
